No capital gains tax a relief for owners and tenants

Rental property owners and tenants will be relieved that
pressure from hundreds of thousands of voters and taxpayers
forced the ideologically-driven Prime Minister to drop the
ideologically-driven capital gains tax, Tenancies War
spokesman Mike Butler said today.

The arguments
used to promote the tax, that a capital gains tax would help
reduce inequality and that all New Zealanders would "pay
their fair share”, assumed that those to be hit by such a
tax were not paying their share, he said.

In fact, those
who would be hit hardest are probably paying more than their
share, he said.

The only people who appeared to support
the proposed tax were those who thought they wouldn’t be
caught by it, Mr Butler said, as was shown by responses of
90 percent who told one poll that they objected to having to
pay a capital gains tax on their KiwiSaver
investment.

However, a capital gains tax is just one silly
idea from the current Government that those in the rental
property sector won’t have to deal with, he said.

We
still have to deal with the costly rental property standards
that appear to have little to do with the claimed
hospitalisation of children, possible changes to tenancy law
that make it impossible to move on disruptive tenants, and
the ring-fencing of rental property losses that may cause up
to 116,000 rental property owners leave the sector, Mr
Butler said.

Stop the War on Tenancies is a group that
since last October has been highlighting the evidence that
successive governments have ignored while creating rental
property
policy.

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